This Old House
by theboywiththebread
Summary: The house seems so empty without Yao, and every room dredges up memories of him. Even though it breaks Ivan's heart to remember him, living like this is better than forgetting the only man he ever loved. RoChu. Oneshot. AU.


The house was quiet.

It was always quiet without Yao. He had been the one who made the house come alive — he talked, he sang, and when he cooked, the whole house smelled deliciously mouth-watering. Now that he was gone, there was nobody else to do things like that, and even if there had been, Ivan wouldn't have wanted them. It was Yao that he loved, and it was Yao that he now missed.

Everything reminded Ivan of Yao, but the house that they had lived in, loved in and considered their home did especially. Every room dredged up memories from the three precious years that they had lived together. Even now, sitting on the bed in one of the guest rooms which they had barely ever used, Ivan couldn't stop thinking about Yao.

In particular, he remembered the first time that the two of them had set foot in the room, before they had even bought the house. The real estate agent had offered to give them a tour, but they had decided to look around by themselves instead.

"Why do we need so many bedrooms? It'll just be the two of us living here," Ivan had said as he followed Yao into the room.

The smaller man had smiled at him, the sunlight streaming in through the window lighting up his golden brown eyes.

"For the time being, yes, but maybe it won't always be just us," he had said.

"What do you mean?" Ivan had asked, leaning his head to the side in confusion.

"We haven't talked about it yet, but I always imagined that some day we would have children. Obviously it's not possible for us to have kids that are biologically ours, but we could adopt them and raise them as our own — if you would want to, of course," Yao had said.

Ivan had smiled and taken hold of his lover's hand.

"You'll make a great father some day," he had said.

"So will you," Yao had replied.

"Really?" Ivan had asked. Yao was so good with children, whether they were his younger siblings or someone else's kids, but Ivan couldn't really see himself being much of a parent.

"You will," Yao had said as he smiled knowingly, "our children will be so loved."

It had never happened. They thought they'd had forever, that they would be spending the rest of their lives together and so they could wait another five or ten years before seriously considering children, but their time together had been cut short.

Ivan got up from his perch on the edge of the guest bed, more than ready to get out of this room and away from the painful memories it brought up. He wandered across the hall to the bathroom, where he looked himself over in the mirror. It was the first time in quite a while that the face staring back at him hadn't had tear-stained cheeks and eyes that were red from crying. Even so, his reflection looked glum and despondent, and so Ivan turned away from the mirror and focused on the first thing that he saw, which happened to be the bath.

Ivan recalled many a happy memory that has taken place in that tub. Bathing wasn't usually a solitary activity in their household — Yao had often come into the bathroom to talk to him while he was in the tub, and Ivan also recalled leaning against the edge of the bath, chatting to Yao as the other man washed himself, getting to see more and more of his slender body as the bubbles from the Hello Kitty brand bubble bath that he always bought slowly disappeared.

The happy feeling that Ivan got from remembering good times with Yao didn't last long, as he couldn't help thinking about the fact that he would never see Yao's body again, nor would he see his lover's beautiful face, talk to him, touch him, anything. Ivan had always thought that he didn't really deserve the love of someone as kind and beautiful as Yao, but that didn't stop him from thinking that it was so unfair that the only man he had ever loved — _would_ ever love — had been ripped away from him.

Ivan sighed and turned his back on the bath, walking out of the room and down the hall into the bedroom. He was tired and wanted to go to sleep — that was all Ivan ever wanted to do. When he slept, he dreamed about Yao, and when he awoke, it would take a few seconds for him to remember to be sad. Those moments were the happiest ones of his day, but he couldn't stop the harsh reality of what had happened from crashing down on him.

The bedroom reminded him of Yao more than any other room in the house. That was where they had slept every single night since they had moved in, and simply being in the room brought up memories of a thousand nights when Ivan and Yao had fallen asleep in each other's arms.

Ivan remembered the first time they had used that bed, on the night that they moved in. He'd insisted on helping the movers bring the furniture into the house, and since he was a little tired because of it, Yao had taken a more active role in bed. Ivan had laid back and looked up at Yao's beautiful face as the smaller man rode him, their bodies bathed in moonlight. Over the years that they had spent together, they had grown to know each other's bodies better than their own, and Yao especially had become a very skilled lover.

Ivan knew that he would never love again, nor would he make love. The idea of being intimate with anyone who wasn't Yao seemed so wrong.

He opened the top drawer of the dresser next to the bed and pulled out his pyjamas. Yao had bought them for him on a whim, saying that they reminded him of Ivan. Seeing as they were pastel blue and had pictures of teddy bears all over them, Ivan was a little confused as to why they made Yao think of him, but they were comfortable, so he wore them anyway.

After changing his clothes, Ivan climbed into bed and pulled the blankets up over him. These days he needed two or three quilts on the bed so he could get to sleep; it was so cold at night without Yao beside him. Ivan missed Yao's warmth, his smile, his _love_. He didn't know what he was going to do with his life — he couldn't imagine getting over Yao, and he certainly couldn't see himself finding someone else to love.

It began to rain, slowly at first, but before long it was pounding heavily on the roof. Ivan had always loved the sound of rain on the roof, but now it just made him sad. It had been raining when Yao had left — they had gotten into an argument, and Yao had decided to go for a walk to clear his head. He'd grabbed his umbrella and walked out into the rain, and Ivan had never seen him again.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. Ivan had seen his lover again the very next day, when the policeman had knocked on his front door and asked him to come down to the morgue to identify the body. Ivan had been so sure that there had been a mistake, that when they lifted the sheet up, he would find that it was someone else's body lying on that metal table.

It hadn't been.

Seeing Yao's body on that table had shocked Ivan to his very core. He hadn't been able to speak and he had barely been able to breathe as he looked the face that was unmistakably Yao's. The eyes that had always looked at him so lovingly were closed, never to open again, and the lips that had kissed his own too many times to count were now cold and lifeless.

A single tear had rolled down Ivan's cheek. His lower lip had begun to tremble and he had shut his eyes, causing more tears to spill down his face. He had wiped them away, but they had just kept flowing. Just thinking about seeing the man he loved as a cold, dead corpse made Ivan start weeping again. He pressed his face against the pillow and tried to muffle his sobs.

Ivan had been told that Yao's body had been found dumped in a downtown alley. He had been mugged, his wallet stripped of cash, and apparently the angle of the stab wounds all over his chest and stomach suggested that he had tried to fight back against his attacker. Of course he had; Yao was no weakling, he was very strong, especially considering his petite figure, and agile too. It had been useless against a knife though.

When Ivan had asked one of the police officers if Yao had at least died quickly, they had hesitated for a moment, and he had known before anything was said that he hadn't. Yao had bled out slowly, and had been in agonizing pain from the moment the knife first pierced his flesh until the moment he died.

The question that Ivan had asked himself so many times over the month that had passed since Yao's dead was _why had it happened to him_? Yao had been so kind and lovely, and Ivan couldn't think of a single person who deserved that sort of fate less than he did.

Ivan unsuccessfully tried to choke back another heaving sob. He was beginning to feel tired; he always did when he cried like this. It was hard to get to sleep otherwise — at first, he hadn't been able to close his eyes without seeing Yao's pale, lifeless body, but it had gotten better. However, It was still rare for Ivan to fall asleep with dry eyes.

Still, crying himself to sleep over Yao was better than getting over him. Ivan dreaded the day when that would happen. He couldn't bear it if he could no longer picture Yao's face, remember his voice and imagine how it would feel if he was still holding his lover in his arms. He could never let himself forget Yao, and even if it meant crying like this every single night, he never would.

Eventually, Ivan felt himself growing drowsy.

_Perhaps_, he thought as sleep came to take him, _I will dream of Yao_.


End file.
